


Lurking Death

by Lunaraen



Category: Minecraft Story Mode
Genre: F/M, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Undead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-25 13:13:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6196390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunaraen/pseuds/Lunaraen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People die; it happens. Those people shambling back from beyond the brink of death, however, doesn't. Not often. But she does. She has a target, a chase to finish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hunger

It’s him. She recognizes his voice.

Like nails on wood, or a wolf gnawing on bone.

It’s a good sound.

He laughs, and she reaches her hand out, lurches forward.

The light-

Bright, hot, _burning_. She doesn’t like it.

Pain, fire, it hurts. Can’t see, blurry.

She stumbles back again, holding her hand. It’s warm, too warm.

They walk away and she loses him. Green disappears in a crowd of noise and food.

She hisses, injured hand curling into a fist.

No, no. Patience. Calm.

He’ll be back.

She will wait. Dark again, the moon will rise.

Yes. Yes, she likes moon. White, shiny, no burn. Good and cool.

The stars are pretty, beautiful.

She can go then.

She’s close.

She’s been close, as sun and moon rise and fall again and again, stinging and relief coming and going.

It’s been that way since she woke up, and she can’t sleep.

Her hand stops tingling and she lets it drop, brush up against chilled dirt.

Must be careful, yes, very careful.

She’s seen what happens if she’s not.

Others, like her, they roast. They get caught.

Swords cut them down, they scream, no one answers.

Not her.

She’s smarter. Watchful.

She’ll have him.

She’ll bite into fresh skin, feast-

She shakes her head and crouches lower, leaves –green, like him, like her- above keeping her safe.

Not food, no.

Eat pigs, cows. Stupid, easy to kill. Fast, but weak. Not him.

The hunger for him is deeper. Stronger.

She follows him because-

Because-

She doesn’t know.

But she wants to hear him chatter, hear him chuckle. Touch his skin, but not to eat.

Why?

She wants to smell smoke –it’s good, not like fire- feel his warmth. It won’t hurt.

She’s confused, but she knows she wants _him_.

And the wait’s almost over.


	2. Of Friends and Swords

Gabriel enjoys the serenity of the little town. It’s growing, day by day, with the new Order of The Stone gaining popularity with each passing minute.

He’s missed talking to people, helping them face to face.

He’s walking, feet clacking on smooth cobblestone, not so much looking for anything and more enjoying the clear air and the starry sky.

Until Gabriel hears a telltale moan, and his sword is out before he’s even turned.

It’s what he sees that has him frozen in his tracks, not the spell or web it feels like.

Brown hair, a tattered dress he hasn’t seen in a long time.

Green skin, blackened mouth, a lurching body intent on moving forward.

“Ellegaard?” Her head moves to him, a low hiss passing sharp, uneven teeth.

She tries to rush him, but his fingers are around her clammy neck before she has a chance.

He wasn’t there when she died. He’d been trapped inside the beast, aware of nothing but pain.

Gabriel wonders if she feels the same right now. If there’s anything left of his old friend, or if he’s better off cutting her down before someone gets hurt.

He’s heard of curing zombies, but the individuals that walk away from those infamous attempts are seldom who they once were.

Ultimately, he doesn’t use his sword.

His friends deserve to know. This isn’t a decision for him, not alone.

Almost feverishly, weak hands try to pry his hands away as a gurgle escapes her throat.

Gabriel feels a twinge of guilt and relaxes his grip a smidge.

This isn’t some mindless creature bent on murder.

Or maybe she is. Maybe it’s his blind, foolish hope projecting the more human, familiar features he’s seeing onto her. Imagining that spark of intelligence coupled with fear in her eyes.


	3. Enchanter's Folly

Ivor knows it’s his fault. He doesn’t need the reminders, doesn’t need Magnus breathing down his neck for it.

Ever since Gabriel brought her back, he’s had no restful sleep, and Ivor can’t remember his last actual meal. An apple here and apple there and it’s straight back to work.

It doesn’t help when Gabriel pulls out his sword on Ellegaard, making her panic and go into a fit. He’s done it twice so far, convinced each time she’s trying to attack or threaten one of them.

He means well, but he’s _really not helping_.

Magnus is no better.

The griefer acts as if it’s simple, as if there’s no prep work needed and no risk. He knows better, they all know better.

He goes on and on about how every day passed is another one she slips deeper, but there’s no way to prove that. The whole process has little science to back it up in the first place, no research done on the subject. It’s always rumor and speculation.

The maniac who’d figured out how to cure zombies, who’s died hundreds of years ago, had been pretty much throwing everything at them and seeing what would happen. There had been no reason or discipline, only senseless torture.

For all they knew, keeping Ellegaard under watch in a safe contained environment and simply waiting would do the trick.

That’s why Ivor keeps writing down observations and checking in. As irrational as it is, there’s a chance, and-

And she’s sitting on the floor, face practically pressed up against the bars as she watches a Redstone torch glow. It’s on the ground, right outside the cage –How he hates keeping her in that blasted thing, but what else can they do?-, it’s Redstone because full on light will kill her and she doesn’t like regular torches.

 Her hand twitches, and then her arm moves towards the torch, stopping last second. Her fingers cup the glow and her eyes are wide, mouth open slightly.

Ivor slams the door behind him as he leaves, book pressed up by one arm against his chest. He walks briskly, every step taking him to where he keeps the splash potions. There’s a chest with a golden apple or two and various brewing ingredients next to them.

Enough is enough.


	4. Explosive Decisions

There’s only so much TNT can fix, even if it seems like a cure-all.

Which is funny when Magnus thinks about it, seeing as how it really destroys pretty much everything too.

But he’s gone out and blown up pretty much everything that didn’t belong to the town and wasn’t breathing. Save a cow or two, but, you know, expected causalities.

His best friend’s back, but it’s as a zombie. She’s more likely to eat him than to greet him. And no one’s doing anything; they’re just keeping her locked up.

Before he was fuming.

Now he’s bored out of his skull _and_ fuming.

So when Ivor runs by like someone’s set his ass on fire, it’s no wonder that Magnus is a step behind.

He knows not to push what Ivor’s already shut down twenty times, but maybe he can tag along when he gets whatever he needs and goes back to Ellie.

Except that the potioneer takes out some interesting items from his little hoard room.

Golden apple, glowing splash potion- It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.

That son of a witch.

 _Now_ he decides to do it?

Freakin finally.

Gabriel, who was reading at the table, the nervous Nellie making sure to stay close, is with them when they open the sturdy wooden door and file in.

The room’s lit up with some dim redstone torches, scarlet light glinting off of the metal cage.

There’s a bed in the corner, sheets mostly torn and pillow ripped in half.

She stopped destroying it when they started visiting, according to Ivor.

Made sense.

Isolation was bound to make anybody go nuts, never mind a zombie.

As soon as Gabriel secures the door, Ivor tosses the splash potion onto the ground at Ellegaard’s feet, glass scattering everywhere.

When she’s given the golden apple, Magnus swears the three of them stop breathing.

She shakes, hisses low and long while she does, trembling hands gripping the iron bars.

He’s not sure how many minutes pass, they may as well be hours, while they wait.

Ellie eventually falls to her knees, but Magnus doesn’t know if her knuckles have gone from sickly green to deathly white because of how tight she’s gripping the bars or if it means something’s happening.

The whole time, there’s a nasty little voice in his head.

There’s a good chance she’ll come back brain dead.

And if she does, it’s all Magnus’s fault. Ivor kept saying they should wait, what if he’s right-

Ellegaard falls to the ground and they all rush the cage, Ivor rushing to get the key into the lock.

Magnus manages to get to her first somehow, time in Boom Town makes you good at shoving and running, and he erratically brushes back brown hair to reveal a motionless pale face.

She’s not a zombie anymore, thank Notch, Jeb, and whoever he’s forgetting, but who is she now?

Her eyes open, brown and unfocused. They’re not black holes anymore, though, so it’s a start.

Her hand reaches up to his face, and when she first lets out a moan he’s half worried.

More like ready to drop dead from a heart attack.

Then it becomes a word, and all he can feel is relieved.

“Ma- Mag… Magnus…” And then her arm falls to her side, but she’s breathing, she has a pulse, and he bets that if Soren were there they all would’ve been kissed.

Heck, he’s feeling like kissing people right now. It’s a good time to be alive.

Because that’s what they are.


	5. The Result of Exuberant Joy

Now, Ellie not being a zombie was great. Magnus found himself back with most of his friends, though they couldn’t find hide nor hair of Soren if they tried.

And he had celebrated. They all had. His and Ellegaard’s “partying” however, had, erm, led to some complications.

One that hadn’t been exactly obvious until he’d started waking up to Ellie’s bouts of sickness.

At the time, they’d both hoped, though already known it not to be the case, it was an aftereffect of being one of the undead. Maybe she’d caught a bug, was under the weather.

( _And he knew it was wrong to blame Ivor for telling them the truth, and it would’ve become even more obvious soon enough anyway, but Magnus couldn’t help but wish the enchanter had told them something else_.)

Sure enough, nope. Turned out she was expecting.

They were going to become parents, like it or not.

It took a while to actually sink in.

A little person. A kid.

Yeah, like Magnus wasn’t going to screw that up.

It wasn’t any real shock. No big surprise, at least not when he considered everything.

( _Looking back on it, what had they expected, not using protection? They’d been in a rush and they’d been sloppy, but that didn’t change anything_.)

That didn’t make it less terrifying.

Not that Magnus was planning on running.

He was the man who’d hidden himself away in an obsidian tower for years, who’d been more than comfortable taking cover behind a lie.

Adding “ditched his wife and kid” to the list wasn’t something he planned on.

His legitimate kid.

That was a different can of worms he wasn’t going to open.

Leaving was tempting, maybe. For two of the longest seconds of his life.

His friends, the new order, everybody seemed to be willing to help. And they would be able to do a much better job than he ever could, he knew that.

But that meant dumping all his problems on them, abandoning Ellegaard after getting her back, leaving some poor kid with a missing bastard of a father.

Right, no. Not happening.

So about nine months both passed quickly and dragged on. Before he knew it she was in labor, and by that point it felt like he’d been worrying for a few years.

Magnus though, not without a bucket of bitterness, how funny it must have seemed to other people. He was the spitting image of a stereotypical soon to be father, pacing the room with a lit cig in his hand that kept going in and out of his mouth.

Gabriel, who at this point deserved some kind of award for being the best friend he could possibly be, offered his reassurances every few minutes, but the knot in Magnus’s stomach refused to leave.

Yes, Ivor was the best healer they knew. If anyone could do the job, it was him, as much as Ivor himself seemed to dislike it.

How much did Magnus owe him and Gabe by now? Too much.

There was a wail, tiny but piercing, and Magnus froze.

Screaming was good, right?

Magnus ran into the next room, rational thought coming second to blind hope and panic.

It wasn’t exactly a clean situation, but Magnus had seen far dirtier. What mattered was that Ellie, alive, breathing, on the bed, was smiling.  Ivor was holding- _something_ -

A tiny little wrapped up bundle.

Ivor held out his arms.

And every single worry Magnus’d had in the past nine months returned with friends.

He was a maniac who hurled TNT at people and things for fun. He was in no position to hold a potato and be trusted, never mind a baby.

Ivor raised an eyebrow.

“Magnus.” It was a tone he knew. It meant “ _Now_ , or so help me I’ll strangle you with my bare hands.”

The griefer crept forward and, as if dealing with a highly volatile bomb, plucked the infant out of Ivor’s hands.

Big wide eyes, brown like his –was a he, wasn’t it- mother’s, small round ears, and a powerful set of lungs.

The kid obviously knew what was best for them, and the whimpering seemed fit to turn into shrieking again.

Well. This was going to be interesting.


End file.
